Secretary of State Husted Loses Appeal on Last Three Days of Early Voting

Moments ago the court of appeals affirmed the District Court’s ruling in favor of the Obama campaign and against Secretary of State John Husted. The full text of the decision has been published by Ohio Capitol Blog here.

This courts decision upheld the lower court’s ruling that Ohioans should be able to vote on the three days immediately prior to the election. The Ohio legislature had attempted to remove these three days of early voting for most Ohioans other than members of the military and immediate family who might be deployed between the Friday and Monday before the election.

It is important to remember two things: the Romney campaign and other Republicans tried to claim that the Obama campaign was seeking to make it difficult for members of the military to vote. The court found that this was not true.

Second, newspaper studies have found that voters on the three days immediately prior to the election were in predominantly Democratic areas.

It is still possible that Husted will appeal to the Supreme Court.

As we reported earlier, outside counsel was retained by the Attorney Generals office to help with this appeal at a cost of $65,000.

We will have more on the opinion once our legal team has had a chance to go through it in detail.

Important note: You can still vote any weekday (except Columbus Day) between now and election day. You don’t need a reason. You don’t need an ID if you’ve voted in an election before.

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The Dispatch reported that the early voting on the 3 days before the election isn’t required only that if they have it it must be for everyone… so that means if a BOE can’t decide to have it or not then Husted will side against it and not all counties will have it

http://plunderbund.com Joseph

I believe this is true, Doug. However, the Husted reasoning for doing everything he’s done so far has been for uniformity. The only way he gets uniformity is if he issues a directive ordering every BOE in every county to be open during those hours.